Sodom and Gomorrah

Every year the United States, the United Kingdom, and a
host of other industrialized nations ship (often illegally) cargo containers
filled with unwanted electronic waste off to less developed countries
for disposal. One of the places this e-waste ends up is Agbogbloshie—
nicknamed Sodom and Gomorrah—a low-income suburb of Accra, the capital of
Ghana. There, workers (often teenage boys) comb through the detritus of Western society looking
for anything that might be of value. Sometimes they are able to retrieve whole parts, like a
disk drive. In most cases they break up the gear, often burning it, to reveal valuable metals such
as copper, aluminum, and even gold. What remains is discarded on land that abuts a coastal
lagoon that flows into the Atlantic Ocean.

The e-waste recycling in Agbogbloshie provides a livelihood for thousands of people, but it also
results in a heavily polluted environment that impacts the health of the workers and residents of
Agbogbloshie, people living nearby, and the natural ecosystem. Over the last decade the Ghanaian
government has attempted to redevelop the site and restore the lagoon, an effort called the Korle
Lagoon Ecological Restoration Project (KLERP). But the results have been mixed, and the e-waste
recycling remains. Much of the opposition to the project has come from the residents of the town,
many of whom are recent migrants from the north and fear that redevelopment will mean the loss
of their homes and their livelihood.

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